There's a mighty noise rattling the walls in the alternative rock world, a full-blast face-off between Minneapolis and London heavyweights that tops the card in this look at rock's semi-organized underside. Alternative or college rock is the current incarnation of the renegade soul that over the years has materialized as underground, punk, new wave and weird stuff, among others.

Fronds cut from city-owned palm trees will be available at West Wilshire Park on Oct. 10 and 11 for synagogues to use in celebrating the Sukkot holiday, a Los Angeles official said. Palm fronds are a popular roofing material for the temporary structures that observant Jews build in their back yards during the seven-day holiday, which is known in English as the Feast of Tabernacles. The flimsy huts are also built in synagogue yards or parking lots.

Pure and simple, Theresa Yianilos has a passion for palms. Let's begin at home. Her sprawling, tile-roofed house in La Jolla is surrounded by a forest of the trees, some squatting close to the ground, others arching toward the sky, more than 1,000 individuals and 50 species spread over not quite 2 acres. It doesn't stop there. Yianilos has made something of a name for herself through the politics of palms.

I knew I was in trouble the night my guests arrived wearing pith helmets. It's fine to have fronds in high places, if you don't let them get in your hair. It all started when I acquired a large dog with a deceptively gentle air and jaws that could demolish anything at ground level, including the birdbath and a stone turtle. I decided a little high living was the answer--hanging containers.

During the last few years much has been written in newspapers and magazine articles about Palm Canyon. Its charm consists in the startling combination of rocky gorges and canyons, essentially savage and desert-like, with the arboreal grace of tall, tropic-seeming palms growing in native loveliness beside a snow-fed, gushing stream.

January 17, 1988 | BRUCE WHIPPERMAN, Whipperman is a free-lance writer living in Berkeley.

It's easy to see why Kovalam Beach, just south of here near India's southern tip, is sometimes called the country's most beautiful beach. On its rocky headlands, palms rustle and sway above the aqua breakers that foam onto the rocks, while in the distance a pearly, palm-fringed ribbon of sand curves gently as far as the eye can see. Bordering the sand in a tall, tufted, emerald band are magnificent coconut palms. Little thatch houses lie beneath the palms' shady fronds.

Coaxing with tuna failed. So did high-pitched pleas. Animal control officers fared no better. But "Spot the Wonder Cat," stuck atop a 65-foot palm tree in Huntington Beach, was rescued on the third day of his ordeal by utility workers. Not, however, without biting and scratching the hand that untreed him. Rescuing the black tomcat was no easy matter for the Southern California Edison Co. linemen, either.

The Palm Court, 11111 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (213) 479-1400. Open Monday-Friday, 7:30 to 11 a.m. (breakfast), 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. (lunch), 3 to 7 p.m. (cocktails and hors d'oeuvres). Validated parking. Full bar. All major credit cards accepted. Lunch for two (food only), $25-$40. It is one of the great secrets of the restaurant reviewer's trade that, as a class, most of us genuinely want to like the restaurants we address.

Twelve UCLA students who stripped fronds from a palm tree at Kehillath Israel synagogue to decorate a fraternity party last week have formally apologized to the temple, according to Peppy Stern, office manager. Temple officials do not view the incident as anti-Semitic, but believe it was "a fraternity function that got out of hand," she said.

Palm Springs residents now have their own song, thanks to two West Hollywood songwriters whose ballad, "Palm Springs," has been chosen as the city's official tune. Richard Froeber, singer, composer and pianist, and his manager, Irene Mayer, both part-time residents of Palm Springs, were the winning entrants in the city's songwriting contest. Froeber and Mayer wrote their winning ballad about 20 years ago, Mayer said, "but nobody seemed to care about it."